Advert – MI SIG on 5th October September 13, 2010

The next UK Oracle User Group (UKOUG) Management and Infrastructure SIG is coming up in a few weeks – 5th October in the Oracle City Office. You can find the latest agenda here. If you do not know what we (the MI SIG) cover, it is basically technical topics at a slightly broader level. So not so much example code but how feature X works or how to use Y over 100 databases plus. We also touch on management issues, which I always worry will put some potential attendees of,f but in fact nearly always goes down very well.

We have an excellent line up of topics and presenters for this meeting. Does Exadata work in the real world? Peter Scott will be presenting some of what he has learned doing this. Want to know about oracle’s latest licensing options and how to save money? Alex Sandercock from Turnstone Services will be talking about that. Confused about how storage is changing and how the database interacts with it? James Moorle will cover that one.

It has been a real struggle getting the agenda together for this meeting, I can’t believe we have ended up with such a strong one in the end. I mean, I am not even having to bore everyone with my voice again.

The first problem was I just failed to get the organising started. As the Chair, it is my main function to sort out the meetings. It was always “tomorrow” as I had so much on for every “today”.

The second problem was we were up against Oracle Open World. We had a few people “in hand” who had indicated they would be happy to do a talk for us, but were scheduled to do OOW. I thought it was a bit mean to turn us down for some obscure vendor event in the US. So we moved our event by a month.

The final problem was that we still had trouble with speaker availability, as it was now so close (it might not seem close if you are considering going to a meeting, but if you are being asked to sign up to preparing and giving a presentation, 5 weeks is not a lot of notice).

It all came together in the end, with the help of the co-chairs, especially Neil Chandler.

I know I have said this before, but I struggle to understand why SIG meetings are not flooded with people coming to them. It is free training in effect (if your organisation is a member of the UKOUG – £80 otherwise, I think). All the presenters are experts, often presenting similar talks to those given at Oracle Open World or the UKOUG Conference. OK, it is a day not working in the office but as well as the “free training” you meet up with other people who have similar work issues as you. I find it invaluable to have a circle of external people I can occasionally say “What do you think of this” to. The meeting other people is aided by us retiring to a pub after the event, for those inclined to do so.

I try to get to SIGs when I can and in fact, if I was not at my own on the 5th, I’d like to be at the modelling and architecture one – I’ve been meaning to get to that one for ages.